Jimmy Alapag: At the end of the day, it’s all courage

MANILA, Philippines – Rappler interviewed Jimmy Alapag on November 7 about his thoughts on courage, as part of Rappler’s conversation on #InspireCourage. The 38-year-old Alapag, captain of national team Gilas Pilipinas, announced on November 3 that he is walking away from an illustrious 13-year stint with the Philippine Basketball Association.

I think courage is just the ability and the mindset to chase and reach for whatever dreams or goals that you have for your life – without any fear of failure. It’s not easy to step out of your comfort zone. And it takes tremendous amount of courage to leap out there and chase what some people might tell you can’t be done.

You might not think it can’t be done, but courage is to go out there and jump with both feet in and work tirelessly to achieve whatever goals or dreams that you have for yourself, and again without any fear of failing. And for the times that you do (fail), courage means having to get back up and keep climbing and keep pushing.

I think at the end of the day it’s all courage, just in different aspects of life.

[Take] someone who’s in the military who fights for our safety and our lives. That’s an incredible amount of courage as well, putting your life on the line for a lot of people who are strangers to you. Fighting for the safety of the country, that might be the highest amount of courage that you could show because you’re putting your own life at stake.

Even for athletes – athletes who are struggling in whatever story they might have and with whatever obstacles they might face. It just takes a lot of courage to find a way to overcome them.

Obviously there are different avenues that you can take, but without courage your chances of getting over the hump and reaching that best version of yourself is almost impossible. – Rappler.com